Photo credits L-R top row: Muhammad Ruqiuyaddin, Carl Jorgensen, Mesbapi Mari, ,Hamid Tajik, Panitan Punpuang, Jakayla Toney Second row: Houcine, Ncib, Cherry Laithang
Let's Talk
NICE
BY NANCY BUFFINGTON
This past holiday season, I had several friends whose families cancelled their get-togethers. It wasn’t COVID-19 that disrupted their plans–it was anger. They weren’t on speaking terms. Whether it’s the recent election, race relations, or “Meghan Markle: Diva or Heroine?”–we’ve become more and more polarized. Conversations can heat up quickly–just when we really need to stay connected! So what to do? How can we get talking again, peacefully and productively? How do we move towards understanding rather than arguments? I recently took a deep dive into Nonviolent Communication (NVC), a powerful tool for resolving the roughest of conflicts. It has healed rifts between family members, business colleagues, and warring countries. It’s been around for
decades, it’s used all over the world, yet few of us know about it. When I told my BFF Laura about NVC, she stopped me mid-sentence with, “Wait. This is important! Why don’t I know about it? It should be on the cover of the New York Times!” So I’m here to get the word out.
Created by psychologist Marshall Rosenberg (I call him “Mr. Rogers for adults”), NVC has been taught in businesses, schools, prisons and mediation centers globally. By the time he died in 2015, Rosenberg had worked to facilitate communication conflict resolution in 60 countries: Congo, Rwanda, Palestine, Afghanistan. In other words, the Hot Zones. Today, hundreds of thousands learn NVC each year worldwide. Rosenberg’s technique focuses on uncovering each party’s needs—more precisely, the unmet needs behind
Photo by Ivana Cajina
our actions. With our needs heard and validated, we can move to real communication and problem-solving, together. Here’s my unofficial abridged version of NVC’s basic assumptions: • Every human has universal needs. Things like respect, honesty and support. When our needs are met, we feel good! Life is beautiful. We (usually) behave well. When they’re not…read on. •
•
A range of universal feelings arise when our needs aren’t met. Think embarrassed, detached, resentful. Which leads to…
We take action to feel better and get our needs met. Sometimes we resort to notso-helpful actions: teasing, stalking, or ghosting.
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